Ye Olde American Plutocracy Part II

The "founding fathers" of America, in particular the framers of the US Constitution, secured the Republic against monarchy/aristocracy.

They also secured it against theocracy on the Federal level, with the only mention of religion in the original Constitution (the supreme law of the land—it says so itself) being its ban of "religious tests" for office (although that is hardly enough of course to stop modern-day Christian Theocrats from insisting that the US was founded as a "Christian Republic", the Christian Theocratic analog of an Islamic Republic).

But the "founding fathers" and framers of the US Constitution failed noticeably, miserably and completely to secure the Republic against just as vicious and unrelenting an enemy of republics as monarchy/aristocracy and theocracy, plutocracy:

Consider, for example, two American criminal trials: In the one we have defendant Joe Blow, who makes the most frequent or modal wages, and has the most frequent or modal wealth, for his age, for the US. In the other, we have defendant Mr. Joseph Bloviate IV, who receives one hundred times those wages in directorial salary, dividends and capital gains from his family trust's corporation, and has one hundred times that wealth.

Both defendants have been found guilty of the same felony.

And both defendants are by law fined the same amount.

The American judiciary and legal profession absolutely consider this justice, and have from the first.

QED

(Applies to corporations and other organizations, too.)


Keywords: American Bar Association, American Constitution, American legal "ethics", plutocracy

Corruption and Plutocracy

Corruption is plutocracy, and plutocracy is corruption:

After all, if the laws are up for sale, who would you expect the highest bidder to be, the wealthiest or the less so?


Keywords: corruption, plutocracy

Why the Oil Bubble of 2006-8 Isn't Being Investigated or Prosecuted

In the Summer of 1990, the Democratic Congressional "Whip", or leadership, organization met regularly on Thursday afternoons to go over the upcoming week's legislative schedule and to thrash out any political problems.

On Thursday, June 14, 1990, the Democrats had a big one.

The party had enjoyed headlines the week before. The top stories told how leading Democrats, such as Senator Bill Bradley and New York Governor Mario Cuomo, were winning political points by labeling the savings and loan crisis the fault of the Republicans. That Thursday, after discussing an appropriations bill and the politics of the constitutional amendment on flag burning, the talk at the Whip meeting turned to the savings and loan crisis.

But despite the success of Bradley and Cuomo, concern was voiced that the "S&L crisis is going to engulf the Congress". The Speaker warned, "There will be an attempt to personalize and make this an anti-Democratic issue in the fall election."

Rep. Byron Dorgan, a tough populist from North Dakota, argued that the party was allowing a Republican failure to become a Democratic liability. Other members made the point that the Democrats should "nail the Republicans and bring Neil Bush back to the witness panel." Tempers were rising as Speaker Foley entered the fray.

But instead of agreeing to help the party score partisan points against the Republicans—or even search out the truth—Speaker Foley darkly reminded the activists that "any congressional investigation will allow the Republicans to call witnesses." He pointed out that the Justice Department indictment the previous day of Texas S&L operator Donald R. Dixon of Vernon Savings and Loan included illegal congressional campaign contributions. Foley also knew that the indictment named Rep. Jim Chapman (D-TX), an Appropriations Committee member and leadership supporter, as a recipient of those contributions. Dixon had also been on intimate terms with former Majority Whip Tony Coelho, evoking pictures of Coelho's money machine at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee; it would be dangerous to encourage any digging into that particular black hole.

"We will not be able to avoid being called into this imbroglio," Foley warned. "The record will include both sides of the political aisle. Those calling for a special investigation like Iran-contra should remember that Iran-contra was only a question of the action of a Republican president and his staff."

In case anyone missed the point, Foley stated directly, "The S&L crisis affects both parties."

Any chance of a blue-ribbon congressional investigation into the S&L crisis had been killed. Already, Donald Dixon alone had been found responsible for losses of $1.3 billion, the tip of the iceberg in a disaster estimated by the party's own Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) to cost from $300 to $500 billion. Even the administration, which tended to downplay the numbers, estimated in June 1990 that the cost would go beyond $132 billion. Foley's argument that the political price was too high nevertheless won; there were too many dirty fingers, too many marked decks, too many ugly things were waiting to scurry out from under too many rocks. Foley had said, in effect, the price is us.

John Jackley, Hill Rat (1992)

See also:
"Perhaps 60% of today’s oil price is pure speculation" (2008)
"Two Trials to Look Forward To"
"The Suppression of the Oil Bubble Story: An Open Letter to F. William Engdahl"
"IMTOB"


Keywords: corruption, economic warfare, espionage, International Military Tribunal, justice, plutocracy, propaganda, pseudojournalism, sabotage, subversion

Some American Anti-Plutocratic Classics

Douglass, Frederick, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) (many editions)

Litwack, Leon F., Been in the Storm So Long (New York: 1979)

Caudill, Harry M., Night Comes to the Cumberlands (Boston: 1962)

Colby, Gerard and Dennett, Charlotte, Thy Will Be Done (New York: 1995)


Sampson, Anthony, The Sovereign State of ITT (New York:1973)(Greenwich:1974)

Burns, Thomas S., Tales of ITT (Boston:1974)

Bruck, Connie, The Predator's Ball (New York: 1988)

Kallen, Laurence H., Corporate Welfare (New York: 1991)


Riordan, William L., Plunkitt of Tammany Hall (1905)(many editions)

Pearson, Drew, and Anderson, Jack, The Case Against Congress (New York: 1968)

Winter-Berger, Robert N., The Washington Pay-Off (Secaucus: 1972)

Jackley, John, L., Hill Rat (Washington: 1992)


Suggestions welcome. Non-fiction only, please.

Surely there were some non-Leninist-Stalinist critiques of American plutocracy during the Great Depression that I've missed out on or am forgetting (or were suppressed)? (then there was the Gilded Age.)


Keywords: corruption, plutocracy

Ernie Bevin on "Out-Sourcing", Wal-Mart and K-Mart

"Why do people buy sweated goods? Because they cannot afford to buy the best. You will find a bigger purchase of sweated goods every time poverty increases. Our women folk have as good a taste as anybody in the world; the only thing what stops them satisfying it is their standard of life."

1941

The Last British Labour Politician Worth Spit

The road the nation decided to take
produced a perfect Eldorado
to the most sordid and criminal speculators
the world has ever seen,
the type of citizen
who has no regard for the people, the nation, or honor,
and who cares not whom he ruins
or the effect of his acts on national or international life.
Many of them have borne great names;
they have been regarded as leaders
in the financial and social world;
they have influenced and dominated governments.

< Ernie Bevin (1933)

Can you imagine Ernie Bevin benignly presiding over the Oil Bubble of 2006-8—which was run on the ICE Futures exchange in London^[1][2][3]—or quashing a corruption investigation on behalf of the Saudis?


Keywords: plutocracy


[1] "Perhaps 60% of today’s oil price is pure speculation"
[2] "Two Trials to Look Forward To"
[3] "The Suppression of the Oil Bubble Story: An Open Letter to F. William Engdahl"

An American Worm-Chorus

Ship jobs overseas,
Import illegals by thousand-score,
Shift taxes from the rich,
And watch consumer-confidence soar.


Keywords: economics, plutocracy, pseudoeconomics

But Does the AFL-CIO Care? Is the Real Question

"Insurance industry" price-gouging has been one of the many ongoing blows levied against the working-people of America in recent decades, and it strikes me that one blow back against the American Corporate Plutocracy might be for the AFL-CIO to start its own non-profit insurance corporation ( not "not-for-profit", which organizations are invariably frauds as rapacious as the worst "for-profits", while being even more hypocritical, in their rancid pretenses when expedient of not being "for-profit") . . . .

The AFL-CIO should have the money for the initial actuarial and organizational set-up, and of course a great customer-base, which should not be limited to union-members only, since the more the better . . . .

Such union-based non-profit insurance corporation should provide basic health, life, auto and home insurance.

And it would kick the feet right out from under one of the earliest, worst, most hypocritical and most lavishly blood-sucking elements of the American corporate plutocracy (for "blood-suckers" as a term of Constitutional art, see Madison's Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 for August 23 and passim).

Now add a union-based non-profit national BANK to the mix . . . :

And the AFL-CIO can GUT the American plutocracy, to the benefit of all Americans, other than the blood-suckers of the plutocracy themselves.


Keywords: banksters, "banking industry", "insurance industry", plutocracy, unionism, working-people

The Suppression of the Oil Bubble Story: An Open Letter to F. William Engdahl

Have you ever in your life seen such a major story suppressed, as that of the Oil Bubble of 2006-8?

I mean, forget legislative investigation, prosecution, military tribunal:

It's not even being reported or "head-talked".

Even as the economic destruction from it swirls around us still.

I'm trying a little, eg with my blog-post "Two Trials to Look Forward To" and keeping the theme alive on Usenet , but the news/pundit/talking-head blackout is, really, just astounding to me.

I finally quit watching what I derisively call "teevee n00z" over the blackout.

And when Obama appointed Oil Bubble Engineer Larry Summers as his chief economic adviser, it put the cap on it as far as either American political party goes for me:

They're both totally corrupt corporate plutocratic parties as far as I'm concerned now.


I tried to email the above to you at the address given on your Global Research article "Perhaps 60% of today’s oil price is pure speculation" page, but it promptly got bounced back to me with the message "Quota full".


Keywords: corruption, economic warfare, espionage, justice, plutocracy, propaganda, pseudojournalism, sabotage, subversion

"It's the Noo USAye"

A fund manager for Smith Barney is getting off without felony charges after he allegedly ran over a cyclist with his Mercedes and fled the scene in Eagle, Colorado, because, the DA says, felony charges would be bad for the fund manager's business.

Martin Joel Erzinger will not be charged with a felony because "Felony convictions have some pretty serious job implications for someone in Mr. Erzinger's profession," according to District Attorney Mark Hurlbert.

Erzinger oversees over $1 billion in assets for "ultra high net worth individuals, their families and foundations," according to Worth.

Erzinger fled the scene July 3 after allegedly striking Dr. Steven Milo with his 2010 Mercedes Benz sedan on Highway 6, according to court documents. Erzinger later called the Mercedes auto assistance service to ask for his vehicle to be towed but did not report the accident to law enforcement. He claims he was unaware the cyclist had been hit.

"Mr. Erzinger struck me, fled and left me for dead on the highway," Milo wrote in a letter to the District Attorney. "Neither his financial prominence nor my financial situation should be factors in your prosecution of this case."

"Milo suffered spinal cord injuries, bleeding from his brain and damage to his knee and scapula, according to court documents," Randy Wyrick reported for Vail Daily. "Over the past six weeks he has suffered 'disabling' spinal headaches and faces multiple surgeries for a herniated disc and plastic surgery to fix the scars he suffered in the accident" . . . .


(more)

(followup)


New class, old class, next class, any class,
It's all totalitarianism to me.


keywords: aristocracy, plutocracy, subversion

Ye Olde American Plutocracy

The "founding fathers" of America, in particular the framers of the US Constitution, secured the Republic against monarchy/aristocracy.

They also secured it against theocracy on the Federal level, with the only mention of religion in the original Constitution (the supreme law of the land—it says so itself) being its ban of "religious tests" for office (although that is hardly enough of course to stop modern-day Christian Theocrats from insisting that the US was founded as a "Christian Republic", the Christian Theocratic analog of an Islamic Republic).

But the "founding fathers" and framers of the US Constitution failed noticeably, miserably and completely to secure the Republic against just as vicious and unrelenting an enemy of republics as monarchy/aristocracy and theocracy, plutocracy:

Consider, for example, an American civil trial: On the one side we have Joe Blow, plaintiff, and his lawyer, Newgrad Yellowpage. On the other side, we have Mr. Joseph Bloviate IV, defendant; Mr. Bloviate's personal lawyers; Mr. Bloviate's family trust's lawyers; Mr. Bloviate's family trust's corporation's lawyers; and a pack of legal specialists hired specifically by Mr Bloviate's family trust's corporation's lawyers for the trial in question.

The American judiciary and legal profession absolutely consider this a level playing-field in law, and have from the first.

QED


Keywords: American Bar Association, American Constitution, American legal "ethics", plutocracy